Turnitin is a phrase-matching tool that can be used to evaluate student academic work for originality. It compares submitted text against a database of academic sources and web content and highlights any instances of matching or similar text in a detailed report that includes a percentage of similarity, a list of matching sources, and the actual text passages that match published works. The software is commonly used to assess student work authenticity and promote academic integrity.
As noted in Section 10.4 of the Brock University Faculty Handbook, "students must be informed in writing at the beginning of the course if phrase matching software such as Turnitin is to be used”.
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Adding Turnitin to an Assignment
Go to the Assignments tool on the course site.
Select the New Assignment button or edit an existing assignment.
In the Assignment settings under the Evaluation & Feedback tab select the Manage Turnitin link.
Adjust Turnitin settings
Click Manage Turnitin to review the default Turnitin settings or make adjustments.
CPI’s recommended settings are emphasized below.
Turn on Turnitin phrase matching by selecting Enable Similarity™ check for this folder
Select Allow learners to see similarity scores in their submission folder so students can review their similarity reports.
Submissions checked:
Automatic similarity checking on all submissions - all submissions are checked automatically
Identify individual submissions for similarity checking - instructor identifies specific submissions that should be checked
Select Save or select More Options to review advanced Turnitin Integration settings.
More Setting Options
Submissions Settings
Determine to where papers will be submitted and held. This will depend on the assessment’s intentions and the type of file. It may be ideal for a draft document to not be submitted and stored anywhere (the third option), so that future submissions do not match against it.
Standard paper repository, Institution paper repository, or Do not store the submitted papers.
The next options are unavailable as they are overruled by the actual Brightspace Assignment settings.
Similarity Report
Select when and how the Similarity Reports are to be generated. The options cannot actually restrict submissions as that is determined by the Brightspace Assignment settings. The choices only determine when the report is generated (immediately or on the Due Date).
Certain types of material can be excluded from similarity matching, although it is always possible to do so once a report has been generated.
The Exclude small sources option will allow for a word or percentage threshold to be set.
Compare against
Choose which databases the new submission will be compared against.
Exclude assignment template
Instructors can upload a template or create a custom template document exclude specific assignment formatting from being flagged, e.g. question prompts in a take-home exam.
Additional Settings
Save the Turnitin settings as the default configurations for subsequent Assignments via Save these settings for future use.
For more information on Turnitin Integration please review this article: Turnitin assignment settings | D2L
Acceptable File Types for Submission
Microsoft Word
PowerPoint
WordPerfect
PDF
PostScript
OpenOffice (ODT)
Hangul (HWP)
Plain text files (i.e. textbox submissions)
HTML
RTF
Google Docs
(submitted via the Google Drive submission option), contact edtech@brocku.ca for details
Turnitin Integration works for files sized 100MB and smaller.
Files of larger size may be reduced in size by removal of non-text content or compressing the PDF. Files that are password protected, encrypted, hidden, system files, or read only files cannot be uploaded or submitted to Turnitin. Read more here, File requirements (turnitin.com).
Instructors may come across an instance where a student has a 100% similarity match. It’s possible that their submission matches a previous version of the same document. This version could have been submitted accidentally to another assignment, causing Turnitin to store it in its database, resulting in the 100% match.
Selecting the “Submitted to Brock University” link should pull up the document that is supposedly being copied:
